Cozy Crime Fiction

Summer, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, the best amateur sleuth in the country, is delighted to be in charge of the prize-giving at her village summer fair. But the traditional homemade raft race takes a tragic turn when the local undertaker, Solemn Jon, turns up dead amongst the ducks. Jon was the life of any party and loved by the entire village. Surely this was simply an awful accident? But when a spiteful obituary is printed in the local paper, Eleanor realizes there may be more to Jon’s death than first thought.

Kate Palmer has relocated to Cornwall for a quiet life. Moving into picturesque Lavender Cottage with her sister, Angie, the little village of Lower Tinworthy should be the perfect place for their fresh new start. But within weeks of their arrival, there’s a death in the close-knit community.... A woman is found dead in the village hall, with her own kitchen knife next to the body, covered in blood. Kate, a practice nurse at the local medical center, begins to piece together the clues.

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

Every summer for the past ten years, six awe-struck bakers have descended on the grounds of Grafton, the leafy and imposing Vermont estate that is not only the filming site for “Bake Week” but also the childhood home of the show’s famous host, celebrated baker Betsy Martin.

When Cherringham Drama Society invite a local TV celebrity to direct their Christmas show, they get more publicity than they bargained for. Someone's out to sabotage the event, and rehearsals spin into chaos. Jack and Sarah are asked to investigate and soon discover that there's a darker mystery taking place behind the scenes. Cherringham is a serial novel à la Charles Dickens, with a new audio episode released every two weeks.

When the townspeople of Harrogate almost riot over the Christmas décor thievery committed by the chair of the Elf on the Shelf Committee, I know I’m not going to survive the holiday season unless drastic action is taken. Biddy Jefferson turning up dead in my Christmas market stall is not exactly the type of drastic measure I had in mind. With no alibi and a town obsessed with pinning the murder on me, I have to clear my name. This is on top of planning the upcoming holiday ball, dealing with quirky stall owners in the Christmas market, and corralling confused tourists.

Why would a killer ignore expensive jewellery and take a pair of turtledoves as the only bounty? This is only one of the questions that piques Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune's interest after a senior attaché with the Mexican Consulate is found murdered alongside the director of a local bird sanctuary. The fact that the director's death has opened up a full-time research position hasn't eluded Jejeune either. Could this be his escape from policing?

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village to find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 37 - 39.

This latest installment of the beloved No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series finds Botswana's premier detective agency as busy as ever, with no shortage of sensitive situations requiring Mma Ramotswe's keen eye and discerning input. Through it all, Mma Ramotswe will demonstrate that there are solutions to all manner of difficulties, there to be discovered as long as one is led by kindness, grace, and logic, and can rely on the wise counsel of close friends and loved ones.

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village to find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 40 - 42. "Cold Case": It's winter in Cherringham, and petty thief Charlie Topper's life is in danger. Desperate, he reaches out to Jack and Sarah for help: last summer - during a robbery - he witnessed a cold-blooded murder, and now he fears the killer is after him.

Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse, Jane Harden, are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why....

The elderly owner of Mogdon Manor, Victor Hamblyn, dies in a mysterious fire. But was it really an accident? Jack and Sarah are skeptical... The victim's three middle-aged children, who all live in the village of Cherringham, are possible heirs. And possible murderers... Did one of them set the fire?

Havana, Cuba, 2003: Matt, a San Diego journalist, arrives in Havana to marry his girlfriend, Yarmila, a 24-year-old Cuban woman whom he first met through her food blog. But Yarmi isn't there to meet him at the airport, and when he hitches a ride to her apartment, he finds her lying dead in the bathtub. Lovelorn Matt is immediately embroiled in a Cuban adventure he didn't bargain for: the police and secret service have him down as their main suspect.

Scandal hits the staid publishing house of Barnabas when one of the directors is found dead in the strong-room. Suspicion immediately falls on his wife's lover, the junior partner in the firm. But how does an unpublished Restoration comedy come to feature in the tragedy? And what of the odd disappearance of another director twenty years before?

Spring, 1921. Lady Eleanor Swift, explorer extraordinaire and accidental sleuth, hasn’t had a vacation since she arrived in England a year ago. So she books into the Grand Hotel in the fashionable resort of Brighton for some fresh air, fish and chips, and, of course, a dip in the ocean. Eleanor is enjoying her view of the waves and trying to find her bathing suit when calamity strikes: A guest has been found dead at her beautiful hotel. The distraught manager, who can’t afford a scandal, asks Eleanor to solve the case as swiftly as possible.

Christmastime in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there’s murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy.

Daniel Clement has suffered a secret humiliation and to recover, takes respite at the monastery where he was a novice. But the monastery doesn't allow Daniel a break, for there are tensions building there too, as the secret past of novice master Father Paul is emerging. Tension mounts and a murder ensues. Meanwhile back at Champton, Daniel is the subject of village gossip, his mother Audrey is up to something again, there's trouble at the dress shop, up at the big house, and the puppies are running riot. Can Daniel be reconciled with detective Neil and solve the mystery?

Jack's a retired ex-cop from New York, seeking the simple life in Cherringham. Sarah's a Web designer who's moved back to the village to find herself. But their lives are anything but quiet as the two team up to solve Cherringham's criminal mysteries. This compilation contains episodes 19 - 21: "GHOST OF A CHANCE": Every Halloween, the supposedly haunted Bell Hotel hosts its famous 'Ghost-Hunters Dinner', complete with scary stories, spooky apparitions and things that go bump in the night. But this year's event ends in a terrifying accident, and suddenly everyone wonders... Is there a real ghost loose in the hotel?

It's convention season at the Bellissimo Resort and Casino, and Davis Way Cole barely notices. It's hard to pay attention when you live in a Jambalaya Junkyard. But when special events coordinator Holder Darby walks off the job just as 500 Alabama bankers pour in the front door, Davis steps up - or would that be in? Definitely in. Davis steps in it. Not only has the convention director vanished, but a certain Bellissimo guest is missing - one who forgot to pack the million dollars he left in the bathtub.